


We Sink

by placentalmammal



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestor-Era, Black Romance, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 03:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tragedy in eight parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Sink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skeletalLanterns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletalLanterns/gifts).



I.  
There was a time, long before Mindfang’s wriggling, when the title ‘Legislacerator’ had commanded respect. The organization had been formed in ancient times, long before Her Imperial Condescension had consolidated control of Alternia. On the lawless Alternian frontier, high-blooded criminals often went without punishment, as there was no one to enforce Imperial law outside of major cities. The first Legislacerators were vigilantes, self-appointed officers of Imperial Law. They swore to uphold the very letter of the law and to bring criminals to justice regardless of their blood color.

They conducted crude trials in open fields and obscure alleyways, in root cellars and respite blocks. The defendants were invariable found guilty, hung from makeshift gallows, and left at the mercy of the mobs that gathered to watch the spectacle.

But that was a long time ago. By Mindfang’s day, the Empire had consumed Alternia, eliminating the frontier in a crush of cities and farmland. There was no place for vigilantes in the civilized world, and the Legislacerators gradually lost the righteous indignation that had fueled their organization for centuries. They became bureaucrats, puppets of the Empire, impotent and run through with rot and corruption.

II.  
Mindfang first heard Redglare’s name on the lips of a slave. 

“Neophyte’s coming for you,” he spat, as if that meant anything. He was holding his guts in with his fingers, his bluegreen blood staining the deck.

“Redglare’s gonna get ya.”

III.  
Redglare was a hurricane, a whirlwind of pointed teeth and smiles. She was a legend in her day. The lowbloods said she was the greatest hero in a generation and the highbloods regarded her as a joke. She was a thorn in the side of her colleagues and superiors, a brazen, uppity tealblood entirely too clever for her own good. Redglare had read every text, memorized every code. She did not live by the law, she _was_ the law.

Mindfang thought nothing of her. She had heard the rumors (and who had not? The slaves spoke her name reverently, as if she might one day deliver them from their fates) but she paid them no mind. So absolute was her apathy that she did not bother speaking Redglare’s name to her oracle. If their paths were set to intersect, then so be it. Mindfang would be ready.

IV.  
Irony of ironies, the Neophyte didn’t fight fair.

A _real_ Legislacerator, an _honorable_ Legislacerator would never have stooped to petty intimidation tactics and oblique economic machinations in pursuit of their quarry. A _true_ Legislacerator, like the ancients spoken of in the stories, would have openly pursued Mindfang. They would have boarded her ship and challenged her to a duel, and she would have defeated them soundly. Mindfang would have cheated, of course (she was a pirate, unsporting conduct was to be expected of her), but an agent of the law should be above such behavior.

Less than a perigee after Redglare began her investigation, Mindfang suddenly found herself without buyers for her stolen goods. She was sitting on a Condesce’s ransom in stolen luxuries, but they were worthless without someone to buy them. She had spent sweeps establishing a network of buyers, from lowlife pawnbrokers to high-blooded merchant princes. All that work for nought, because after Redglare and her damned dragonmom started burning down pawnshops and hivestems, all of Mindfang’s associates were suddenly unwilling to do business with her.

“You’re a liability,” said one olive-blooded antiques dealer. She spoke matter-of-factly and shrugged as if Mindfang’s misfortunes were not also her own misfortunes. “Cost of doing business.”

After she’d slit the troll’s throat and burned down her store, Mindfang retreated to her quarters and consulted her Oracle: “Is there anyone left, or has the Neophyte got to all my buyers?”

The Oracle’s response was characteristically droll:

“You’re a liability. Cost of doing business.”

V.  
Alternia’s capital, the Imperial City, had been demolished and burned down and rebuilt a hundred times in a thousand years, and the resultant mess of cobblestones and timber was a tangle of twisted alleyways and dead-end streets. If you didn’t know exactly where you were going, you were liable to end up in alleyway with your guts all hanging out.

Mindfang rented a warehouse in the heart of the city’s roughest neighborhood and promised the landlord his pick of the treasures if he kept them a secret. She acted through intermediaries, went to great lengths to conceal the goods and her own involvement. She was exceptionally careful, and less than a week after she stored her treasures, Redglare had burned the warehouse and all its contents to cinders.

That was when she felt the first stirrings of hate for the Neophyte.

VI.  
It was Dualscar’s information that served as the catalyst for Redglare’s investigation. If the Orphaner hadn’t gone to the Grand Highblood, the Legislacerators would never have dispatched their Neophyte.

If it weren’t for Dualscar, the Neophyte might have lived.

VII.  
In the weeks after Redglare’s death, Mindfang found herself wondering if she’d given the Neophyte a death worthy of her reputation. The lowbloods held her up as a hero, and Mindfang thought she might have gone on to deserve the title, if only she’d had more time.

Dead at the hands of the rabble she’d sought to protect. Now _that_ was irony, potent and bittersweet.

She had been a worthy opponent.

VIII.  
Mindfang escaped from the Neophyte’s clutches, but only just. The legislacerator and her dragon lusus had destroyed her ships, her treasures, her livelihood. In a few scant perigees, she had done more to draw Mindfang’s ire than Dualscar had done in sweeps of black courtship. She was every bit as savagely, terrifyingly lawful as she was rumored to be, as sharp and on-point as an arrow to the vascular system.

Mindfang hated her.

 _Had_ hated her.

She had expected the Neophyte to escape, expected their rivalry to continue, unabated for sweeps. Theirs was to have been a romance for the ages, an epic saga of treachery and deceit and pure, blistering hatred as dark as the night sky. The Neophyte was supposed to have escaped and devoted her to career to bringing Mindfang to justice. Mindfang was supposed to have spent hers vexing the Legislacerator, even as she rose through the ranks and shed the title ‘neophyte.’

And instead, she had died. Ingloriously, ignobly, ignominiously, at the end of a rope intended for Mindfang’s neck. She was weak, easily defeated, unworthy of antipathy.

And Mindfang hated her still.


End file.
